Anteelo Master, Author at anteelo

Top 6 Reasons to Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

Posted on 07/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

“Design is the silent ambassador of your business”.

Not long ago, brands and developers were magnetized to the latest technologies and functionalities. They used to introduce all the latest elements into their app development process to give a one-stop shop experience to their users.

But, they failed most of the time.

It was then they realized that they were missing a core element, i.e, app design. They were overlooking the importance of UI/UX design while building an application. And thus, lowering down their chances to touch the hearts of the audience.

Now, coming back to the present, almost every business and brands is now focusing on creating an intuitive UI design and introducing the right interactive elements. They are also considering the latest mobile app UI trends while planning their app’s look and feel.

However, some of the questions they are still struggling with is – Which JavaScript framework to pick for developing their web app UI? Should they go with Vue.js for UI web development or pick some other?

Considering the importance of tech stack on the success rate of app, I will disclose here some of the factors why going with Vue is an ideal solution.

But first, let’s have a quick recap of what is Vue.js.

Vue.js – A Brief Introduction

Designed by Evan You in 2014, Vue.js is an open-source MVVM (Model-View-Viewmodel) JavaScript framework used to create UIs and single-page applications. Its latest version is Vue.js 2.6 and it is the second most loved framework as per Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019

The framework offers a complete set of features that makes it easier for business enthusiasts and developers to enter the UI world.

Characteristics of Vue.js

1. Virtual DOM

Vue.js operates using Virtual DOM. Meaning, any changes made while developing won’t be reflected directly on the DOM. Instead, a replica of the DOM is created which is usually present in the form of JS data structures.

This let developers experiment their design and see the changes in the UI design while having a scope of undo everything in a cost-effective manner. Something that makes it winner of Vue.js vs Angular war.

2. Data Binding

This feature of Vue enables developers to easily set values to HTML attributes, modify the style, and more using the binding directing called v-bind.

3. Animation/Transition

Vue.js also provides developers with multiple ways to implement transition to HTML elements when adding/updating something from the DOM. It also provides the option to add third-party animated libraries to the environment and build more interactive user interfaces.

4. Templates

Vue.js framework delivers a HTML-based template that binds DOM with the Vue instance data. It compiles templates into Virtual DOM render functionality, which simplifies the tasks of User Interface development.

5. Computed Properties

Last but not least, Computed properties is also one of the core functionalities of Vue.js. It encourages designers and developers to attend to the changes made to the UI elements and make required calculations. There’s no demand for additional coding anymore.

Now as you know what is Vue.js and what are its main features, let’s look into the brands which have embraced this JavaScript framework into their tech stack. And then move to reasons why you should prefer Vue.js for UI web development.

Popular brands trusting Vue.js for their development needs

Now as you know which companies use Vue.js, let’s move to the reasons that makes developers pick Vue.js for UI Web development.

Reasons Why to Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

1. Small App Size

The foremost reason to use Vue.js for their application needs is that it is of 18-21Kb of size. However, despite the small size, it offers high speed, something that makes it easier for the framework to lead in the Vue vs Ember battle.

This, as a whole, encourages developers to pick Vue JavaScript framework for both small and large scale app projects.

2. Ease of Learning

Vue.js framework has a simple structure. This makes the learning curve of Vue less steep and thus, makes it easier for anyone to trace and eliminate errors in the coding environment and develop both small and large scale templates quickly. This is the prime reason why is Vue getting momentum in mobile market.

3. Higher Performance

Another pros of Vue.js for development is that it avails higher performance. And the reason behind is that it not works with Virtual DOM, but also pay more attention to the shortcomings. It also comes with the ability to manage high frame rate.

A result of which is that it provides better performance that React, when talking about Vue.js vs React.js.

4. Simple Integration

Since it is based on JavaScript, it can be easily integrated with any existing application where integrating JS is possible. This helps developers create app with Vue.js from scratch as well as introduce Vue.js elements into their existing apps.

5. Flexibility

Another advantage of going with Vue.js for UI web development needs is flexibility.

The framework enables every reputed app development company. to write templates in HTML and JavaScript and run them directly on different browsers.

6. Enhanced Documentation

Last but not least, Vue.js UI framework comes with a well-defined documentation that aids developers to understand the requisite mechanisms and build their own application effortlessly.

Now as you know why choose Vue.js for your UI web development needs, it is likely that you wish to contact the best UI developers.

But, wait.

Before you bring the team on board and step into the UI development with Vue, it is good to be familiar with Vue UI libraries that will bring more profits in the future.

So, taking the same thought into consideration, let’s wrap up this article with a list of prominent Vue UI frameworks and component libraries to consider in 2020 for UI development.

Top 12 Vue.js UI libraries to consider in 2020

1. Vuetify

The foremost UI library that you should look out for your app needs in 2020 is Vuetify.

Vuetify provides developers with 82+ components, server side rendering support, premium themes, and business and enterprise support. Also, it is implemented using the Google Material Design guidelines and offer support to different browsers like Safari 9+ and IE11. This encourages developers to consider Vuetify for their UI app project.

2. Element

Created by Chinese, Element is a Vue.js based UI toolkit for web.

The library, with 350+ contributors, provides developers with a complete selection of customizable components alongside a full style-guide. It is specifically used to build desktop and mobile app with Vue.js. However, it is not responsive in nature.

Also, it offers a version for React and Angular. This makes developers more inclined towards this UI development library for their project.

3. Vue Material

Another VUI-based UI web development components you can rely on in 2020 is Vue Material.

It serves UI/UX designers with different resources like upgraded webpack SPA, single HTML file for easier setup, a universal application with Nuxt.js for SSR, and more. However, it is required that professionals have a basic knowledge of JavaScript, Vue.js, and Vue Router to build engaging UI solutions.

4. Quasar Framework

Quasar is one of the most-mentioned frontend development frameworks for creating responsive sites, electron apps, and hybrid mobile applications.

Some of the features that are behind this popularity are:-

Cache busting,
HTML/CSS/JS minification,
Sourcemapping,
Tree shaking,
Code-splitting and lazy loading,
Linting,
ES6 transpiling, and
Out-of-the-box accessibility.

5. Buefy

Buefy is also one of the finest development tools to consider for your app project.

It is basically a lightweight UI library based on Bulma, a CSS framework. The library holds various similarities with SASS and even avails a large number of ready-made components. This makes it easier for developers to start their beginner-level project. However, it is not a right fit for a large-scale project, provided the elements are limited.

6. Bootstrap Vue

Blending together the power of Vue and Bootstrap – a popular CSS library, Bootstrap Vue has also become one of the UX/UI developers’ favorite tools.

The UI library provides a vast range of Vue.js UI components that are compatible with the WAI-ARIA guidelines for web accessibility. This makes it perfect to build a responsive and mobile-friend project easily and quickly.

Additionally, it has a robust community support and a comprehensive documentation that makes it safe for anyone to step into the UI development.

7. iView

iView is a high-end UI library that caters the needs of designers with ample of UI components and widgets, offline documentation, command line interface (CLI) tool called iView-CLI, and more.

If you are planning to step into the UI web development arena using this library, this starter kit will help.

8. Muse – UI

Muse-UI is a Vue 2.0 based Material Design library that will gain momentum in 2020 too.

It is easy to install and use, and serve designers with around 40 Vue.js UI components and themes that offers higher customization possibility.

9. Vuikit

Vuikit is another responsive library preferred by developers for Vue UI web development.

This library is created as a ‘monorepo’ governed by Yarn workspaces. It keeps icons and themes published as distinct packages, and delivers a clean and consistent design.

10. Mint UI

Mint UI is a light-weight mobile UI library comprising of JS and CSS elements to introduce in your app development plan.

It is a chinese project, but comes with a well-translated broad documentation. This makes it easier for UI developers to employ it in their mobile application development plan.

Here’s a demo that will give you a better understanding of how to implement it into your app.

11. VuePress

Another Vue.js UI web development library that you can opt in 2020 is VuePress.

It is primarily a minimalistic, Vue-backed static site generator, but can also be considered for introducing dynamic Vue components in normal pages and posts.

Here, each created page has pre-rendered and static HTML components after which Vue combines all the static content to form a single-page application.

12. Ant Design Vue

Last but not least, Ant Design Vue is yet another UI library that you can watch out for while planning your next app project.

The library is a good choice for development when you wish to build an enterprise-class UI design, share Ant Design of React design resources, and introduce a set of high-quality Vue components. But, one has to first ensure that Node.js 9 or above are already installed on your device.

How CI/CD saves up to 20% of mobile app development time?

Posted on 07/06/202107/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery has grown to become a software development practice which brings down not just the effort but also the app development cost that goes behind.

Through the CI/CD for mobile apps process, businesses can avail a plethora of benefits, straight from the one time setup: Automated builds, improved communication, automated shipping, and zero server maintenance.

In a sans CI/CD world, some mobile app development companies release their apps manually, by handing them off from one team to the next.

There is almost always a delay at every stage which leads to irritated teams and unhappy clients. And the app ultimately gets live via a tedious and error-full process which delays the entire revenue generation possibilities.

Now if you look at the continuous delivery pipeline illustration below, you will get a different picture.

It depicts how the developers write their code and commit them to a source code repository once/multiple times a day. Following which, testing, staging, and production happens inside the CI pipeline and is deployed to the customers directly.

What is CI and CD?

Let us first answer what is mobile continuous integration before moving on to filling in the details on what is continuous delivery and what is continuous deployment.

Now before we go on with defining what the approach stands for, let us put something out in the open.

Even though there are a whole lot of different mobile app development process sets operating in the market today, the answer to what is Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery in devops and what is CI and CD in agile would be exactly the same.

With that clear, let’s head out with the explanation.

Continuous Integration

Custom Integration or CI is the custom mobile app development practice where regular integration of code changes happen in a shared code repository. Usually, the practice happens at least once and maximum of multiple times in a day. This encourages committing of small changes often compared to committing of large changes less frequently.

Every commit then triggers a build in which tests are run which helps in identifying if something is broken.

Continuous Delivery

It is all about the capability to regularly deliver the integrated code to production. The end result of this stage is that you have green builds that are ready to be released in one click.

Continuous Deployment

This process goes one step ahead for it enables automatic deployment of every main branch change which passes the CI pipeline. However, it is better to avoid doing this, for you would need to perform testing which are not limited to automated.

Stages of CI/CD for Mobile Apps Development

The process of integrating CI/CD for mobile apps can be divided into seven sections or stages.

Code: Code is the backbone of any application. The process of writing them which starts with the development phase goes on to the maintenance phase. In the continuous integration and delivery approach, developers write code for CI components, which in turn, prepares it for automation in the next stages.

Build: This is the part where the app is built. Multiple developers work on the process happens every day. What is different in case of CI/CD for mobile apps is that once the developers have finished their work, they add them in the CI application.

The output of the stage is a URL.

Test: Once the code components are entered in the CI platform, the next step is to see how the app performs with inclusion of new updates. The CI software here gives developers reports on how the app is performing, in addition to some useful analytics.

Even though it is automated, it helps to involve someone from the mobile app quality assurance team in the stage to ensure that the changes are acceptable.

Package: Once the performance and quality tests are made, it is time to deploy the application. The stage is applicable both for the new apps and the existing apps whose new version is going to be released.

Release: The next stage of the incorporation of CI/CD for mobile apps is applying the new URL for the app on devices for release.

Configuration: The next stage is configuration of the infrastructure. You would need to format the entire coding and management tools, which would enable people to regularly access the CI platform.

Monitor: Once the app is running, you would still need to continue monitoring its performance. The developers, at this stage, ensure that any additional code written for improving the app has gone through the CI stages first. Doing this, lowers the chance of any bugs or problems emerging mid way.

Getting started with Continuous Integration and Delivery

It is not difficult to get up and running with Continuous Integration. Here are the steps that mobile app development companies generally follow to start using CI/CD for mobile apps smoothly.

How to Implement Continuous Delivery for Mobile App

Implementation of a version control of choice – SVN, Git, or Bitbucket
Writing test for critical elements in the code base
A suitable CI/CD service which would enable running the tests on every push to repository.

Let’s look deeper into what the implementation of continuous integration can offer to the everyday software development process. The realization of these advantages and the answer to how continuous integration and delivery helps translates into reduction of risks attached with building and paving the road to get the features out to the customers.

Business Benefits of Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery

1. Faster feedback loop

In application development process, not knowing can really hurt. One of the primal things that slows down the software development process is the lack of feedback on the impact of changes and the quality of work. It is easy to get disillusioned that you are moving too fast if you are commiting codes frequently and moving to other tasks without running any tests. While the reality is that it’ll get extremely difficult to figure out what changed in the code and by whom, when there is an issue.

CI/CD for mobile apps solves these issues by giving you prompt answers on the question if something broke in a commit.

2. Increased visibility & transparency

When the CI/CD pipeline has been set up, the whole team would know what is going on with the builds in addition to getting the latest test results. This means, they would be able to plan their work in context and would get a clear idea of which changes tend to break the builds more often.

3. Avoidance of integration mess

If you look at software as legos where each of the pieces are created by developers individually, the whole software development picture becomes one where different legos meet to become one giant piece. What eases this process is the lack of friction.

Even if a lego piece is fine, you will still have to make sure that it fits well with the entire system – Continuous integration does exactly that by connecting the pieces of software together everyday.

4. Identification & solving of issues early on

An obvious phase of software development is bugs. Now, the more bugs pile on, the harder it then gets to identify and solve them. With different kinds of automated tests running in the continuous integration pipeline, you’d get to know what is to be fixed the moment a test fails.

5. Improve testability & quality

The easier it would be to test something, the more convenient it would become to test the quality. The simple rule is that the more your code is written in a way that it can’t accommodate writing tests, the more difficult it would be to make it bug free. The testability efforts ultimately depends on how easily the new builds are made available and the kind of tools you work with, plus the control you have on the test environments.

Top Mobile Continuous Integration CI/CD Tools

Jenkins

Founded in 2006, it is the top open-source continuous integration server. Developers have developed over 300 plugins for adapting Jenkins into different build, test, and automation based workloads.

CircleCI

The tool enables developers to release codes by automating the build, test and deployment process. It allows them to identify and fix bugs much before it reaches the customers.

Travis CI

It is another top mobile continuous integration tool operating in the market today. It is a distributed, hosted services used in the development and testing of projects which are hosted on GitHub. It also offers custom deployment of proprietary version on the client’s hardware.

Bitrise

It is a continuous integration & delivery Platform as a Service which focuses on mobile app development. The developers, through the tool, are easily able to automate the test and deploy phase of their apps within a few clicks.

Visual Studio App Center

The Microsoft backed tool brings different services, usually brought into use by developers in an individual, integrated product. It enables mobile app developers to build, test, and deliver, monitor their apps, while allowing them to create an installable app package with every push made to the repository.

While these are just five, there are a plethora of different continuous integration and delivery service providers available in the market. Here are a few things to consider when researching the choices:

How to select the best CI/CD tool for your app development needs?

1. Proprietary vs Open Source

On the basis of context, there can be instances where open source tools might be off the table for some clients. But at the same time, investing in proprietary tool can be a little costly side.

If going with open source tools fits in the context and budget, there are a number of options present in the market.

2. In the Cloud or Self-hosted

If you are willing to host the CI/CD service yourself and have the time and resources for setting it up, configuring, and maintaining it, you should go with Self-hosted services. But, if you are looking for crossing off build infrastructure maintenance off the work list, go with a Software as a Service solution.

3. Ease of setting up

A frictionless adoption of CI/CD is the secret to getting everybody on board. So, going with a tool that takes a lot of time in setting up can backfire your intention of choosing the approach.

Software Development in the Digital Workspace – A new norm

Posted on 04/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

From a time when only 5% of the employees in the USA were working remotely to now when millions across the world have been locked down in a remote working condition, the time and era of workspace is witnessing a drastic shift. While the freelancers and gig economy patrons are already extremely used to the idea of remote working, there are teams that have been working in collaboration with each other since the inception of their job roles. One of which are software developers. The software development work process has always required designers, developers, and QA experts to work in close collaboration, one that mainly has been running on a face to face since the beginning of the time.

So what brought around this shift for software developers?

Although coronavirus has made it a mandate for the IT employees and software developers to get confined in their homes or respective locations and adapt to the remote workspace lifestyle whether or not they are willing to, the shift has been gradually moving for much longer.

According to a report by TechRebulic where they interviewed several developers, where 43% of the developers cited the option to work remotely as a must-have when looking for a company’s offer, and 53% of respondents said they would think less of a company if they didn’t offer any remote work options.

Remote work has drastically improved work life balance for the employees, as the report highlighted. It was also one of the biggest reasons behind the trend becoming a massive norm. Remote employees said this working style reduces stress of commuting (77%), provides the ability to work from wherever they want to live (75%), and allows them to care for children or family members (56%).

The next event besides comfort that has fueled digital workforce and remote work lifestyle is the onset of outsourcing. In the search for low cost of developer acquisition, entrepreneurs generally take the remote work and outsourcing route.

The impact of remote workforce on app development and delivery ecosystem

Although the adoption of remote workforce in the IT industry has been slow, the software development industry is slowly and steadily coming at par with the digital shift. There are some mobile app development companies which are operating as a torchbearer for others who are struggling with the shift.

The direct impact of this workspace shift is visible in the greater adoption of digital solutions and collaboration platforms. With the right network conditions and the presence of platforms to enable real-time collaboration, it can be extremely easy to streamline the processes and that too in a real-time mode.

While the presence of tools and collaborative platforms are doing a great job at resisting the shock, the problems are mainly surrounding the managerial front – something that companies are able to solve when they partner with the companies with remote workforce. These companies are not just used to the remote work setup but their teams also have the ability to work independently.

We have shared both: the list of tools and the issues that the challenges that PMs face when managing remote software developers face, a little after a few scrolls.

Benefits of remote job for developers

1. Higher Inter-Team Collaboration

In digital workspaces, the individuals work in collaboration with other teams which helps in supporting the key organizational priorities. A high exposure to other experts and thinkers inside an organization tends to enhance mobility by enabling the employees to develop new skills and try newer roles, which ultimately increases engagement and productivity. This is the reason why remote work developers tend to be more connected with their organization, across levels compared to their centrally located counterparts.

2. Greater Flexibility

The employees who are given the freedom to choose their work timings and work locations are a lot more engaged. Additionally, the flexible schedule helps in closing the gender gaps prevalent in the corporate world thus improving diversity and success in the organization. This high flexibility is what acts as a backbone of the statement that happy employees are more productive.

3. Greater returns on the IT investments

There are several decentralized platforms which are very simple to use and enable the employees to access the cloud-based data and tools. It also frees up the company’s IT teams to focus on high-level priorities like integration of tools enabling seamless workflows and troubleshooting the clunky legacy software.

4. Higher efficiency

A remote team is able to streamline the administrative tasks, remove the barriers when it comes to accessing resources and data, and increase critical information flow across businesses. This streamlining of tasks enables the employees to make several data-centric decisions effectively and much more swiftly than before.

The benefits of remote workforce for the software developers can only stand true as long as they have the necessary toolset to drive the application towards success.

Tools that smoothen the process for software designers & developers working remotely

The toolset that are devised to enable smooth remote workflow for the software designers and developers are usually are divided into two parts – one which takes care of the remote dev work and another which looks into managing remote workers:

Collaboration & Resources.

For Collaboration:

Team collaboration:

Trello
Sketchboard
Zeplin
InVision
SpaceTime
Screenhero
TipHive
Bit.ai

Task management

Taskworld
Fusioo
Jira
Trello
Eylean Board

Communication

Slack
Skype
Telegram
UberConference.

For Resources:

Type Anything
Frontify

Challenges that project managers might encounter when working with the remote software developers

Even though remote software development has become a common practice, it still comes with some obstacles and unique challenges which should be overcomed for attaining success. In a remote development setup, you will find that everything from project management to communication and technical aspects of the software development tasks call for a different mindset. Translation: Managing remote employees is very different from managing a centrally located team of developers.

Having developed more than 700 applications for global clients, we have gained several insights into the dos and don’ts of remote app development work and what managing remote employees entails.

1. Onboarding of new team members

Introducing new developers to a large codebase calls for a lot of effort and time. When we say codebase, we mean a collection of source codes that are used to develop a specific software component and system. When the codes are poorly documented or messy, the new remote developers will find it extremely time-taking to know how the code pieces are working in sync. This becomes all the more difficult when they are working with a remote manager who is evry new to them.

The solution to this lies in writing clean codes that follow the industry standards. A detailed and clear documentation should also be followed at every stage of the app development process.

2. Communication related issues

One of the biggest challenges of remote development teams is communication. Collection of daily updates, discussion of urgent issues, and explaining objectives, new tasks become overly difficult when you work in different locations and even time zones.

In order to make sure that everyone in the team is on the same page, at Anteelo, we schedule frequent online meetings with both development teams and clients. Additionally, we also hold longer weekly meetings and app demonstrations at the end of every development sprint.

3. Tracking the progress

In the absence of issue tracking systems and version control, working with remote developers becomes a complete nightmare. They also make projects a lot easier to implement and manage. Version tracking enables team members to work on the file anytime, without worrying about the instances like overwriting of current versions or time it takes to locate where the latest file iteration is stored.

The issue tracking tools have proven to be extremely useful for the product owners and project managers to oversee the complex development process. Everybody can see the scheduled work task and what the developers are working on. At Anteelo, we also invite our clients to view the issue trackers that help them see where the project has reached.

The Best from the Rest Using Intuitive Search Specs

Posted on 03/06/202104/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Sometimes you hear people utter the phrase “I had an intuition” at which point you may wonder whether he/she has the ability to view the future. But that isn’t the case. Intuition is the feeling people derive based on instinct and this instinct isn’t based on conscious reasoning.

This subliminal, cerebral concept holds immense significance in the world of mobile app design. After all, why do we associate one symbol with a specific action? Is it a natural tendency or one that emerges from our daily experiences? Today we’ll chase the answers to such questions and determine what features and facets constitute an optimum intuitive search functionality in a mobile app.

What is Intuitive Design?

An intuitive app design consists of everything that defines the importance of UI/UX design in an app. Its components, be it the typography or content flow, allow guesswork to guide action, say searching for information. An intuitive design subtly conveys its meaning at the same time staring the user in the face, quite literally. It is so symbolically evident that the user cannot and must not think of anything else, other than the intended use of the feature. An intuitive design architecture must engender the following characteristics to be considered instinctive:

Discoverability is second nature to mobile app design search. From the menu bars to the profile sections, you can explore everything within a click-or-two without losing your way.

Affordance is another word for perception. Intuitive UI uses a barrage of visual cues to tell the user what would clicking a button result in. Its elements keep in mind what the user wants/expects from a button. This brings us to our next point.

Expectations of the user should be complemented by visual cues. A bell commonly denotes a notification, thumbs-up a like, etc. Intuitive UI design integrates a diaspora of icons that appeal to common sense.

Efficiency should be thought of in terms of minimalism. A minimalist design is non-confrontational in that the users go through exactly the steps that they must to accomplish a task.

Responsiveness of the app communicates whether the performed action by the user is successful. Intuitiveness takes it a step forward and expounds on corrective measures in instances of a boo-boo.

Importance of Intuitive UX Design

Mobile has gained a domineering position in almost every aspect of our life. For many, they’ve totally replaced desktops. As a matter of fact, 40% of people use their phones for online searches. Of all the video views in the world, more than 50% come from smartphones.

Factoring in the time and utility people thrust on to their phones, intuitive design elements pose as an exercise that any mobile app design agency would undertake foremost and one that everyone should know when reading into a mobile app design guide.

Creating Intuitive Mobile App Search

Search is probably the first action most users perform in any app. It’s a wormhole that lets users fast-forward to their area of choice. Yet, you would find striking differences between the search functionality of a great app and a good app.

Having been a mobile app design company since our foundation, it is our DNA to go intuitive-first, as we have on so many occasions. As a result of which we’re in a position to share with you our thoughts on how to go about designing a user friendly in-app search option. We’ve divided the process into 4 stages for better understanding.

1. Search Bar

Let’s begin with the physical attributes of the search bar, its form, and on-screen positioning.

Search Bar Size

The bible for UX search best practices recommends making the search bar big enough.

If your design permits, the search field should ideally be an expansive box placed in the view of the user. Often, you would come across search icons, clicking which expands the search field. Though it appears interesting, yet from a UX point of view, it bears negative results and thus can be noted as a UI/UX mistake you should avoid.

Not recommended

Contextually, the icon is supposed to simplify typing a query, but the icon-only search adds an extra step before the user can do so. Opting for an open text field would point the users in the right direction.

Recommended

Search icon

The search field should, without fail, be represented by a magnifying glass. Thanks to all the snitch flicks that stereotyped magnifying glasses to look for something, people have come to accept the sign by default. Use the most simplistic image of a magnifying glass with little to no graphical additions. This is one place where the less you do, the more it speaks for itself.

2. Entering Search Query

Most of us have been typing in the Google search bar for years now. Yet, we commit typos. Misspellings annoy users as not everyone is a grammar-nazi and usually want to rush through the entire step. Therefore, it is the responsibility of a mobile app design company to make entering the search-input as easy as possible.

Keyword-based Search

Nothing overboard about it. You enter the search query in the search field and down below appears a list of search results that match your keywords. Click the option closest to your intended information and there you go. Quite a few apps continue to employ this mechanism. Twitter for one displays both the hashtags associated with your query followed by the social handles if any.

But such a system has its shortcomings. It depends on the consumer typing the correct input every single time. This is solved by some of the more innovative solutions thanks to the emerging deployment of AI in search, as we shall see in the coming sections.

Filtered Search

Websites with a product catalogue stretching into the thousands integrate heavy handed filtered search to deliver a refined search functionality in the app. Examples include domains such as E-commerce, Edtech, and travel. Given that there are thousands of results matching the inputted keyword, it is wise to let a user zero-in on options most closely related to their search.

While some apps offer the option to add filters right before hitting the magnifying glass, there are others that daunt the user with total results and then make them sort through.

Predictive Search

In terms of apps that involve a lot of data entry, such as conversational apps (like Whatsapp) or lifestyle apps (like Pinterest), incorporating an auto-complete option is a good idea. The feature is one of the ways AI can help develop next-gen apps. The app design firm that undertakes the development of your application must build in-app capabilities that register recent searches as part of the search history. Upon re-entering a keyword the first thing that the user would see in the auto-suggest drop-down list will be his/her recently entered keywords.

If yours is not an E-commerce store, then auto-suggest should blend in perfectly as there is a pattern to everything the user does and your job is to uncover that to make in-app search simple.

Limited Search

Onloading your app with various sophistications may not always be the right choice. Websites want to prolong user-sessions in order to maximise page visits. An app runs contrary to this theme and focuses on recurring visits by the user, even if the sessions last a couple of seconds.

Design search considerations could entertain the idea of limiting search features in an app. Keep only the amount that transports users where they want to be, for instance, compartmentalizing your content into categories as is done in Hotels.com.

Voice Search

Voice search is designed for a hands-off experience while using the app. Apps that cater such a functionality often tend to be those that are used for cross-connection and multimedia broadcasting. Google offers one of the best voice search functions beginning which the market started designing content that is voice search friendly. Spotify is yet another example, which allows you to search songs with the hold of a button.

3. Fetch Results

The thumb rule states search results should come up as soon as the finger hits enter. However, you could seldom face network lag, in which case the user should know to expect a delay.

This speed test indicator is a good example. It uses a speedometer animation to divert attention from the fact that the app is consuming time to calculate the actual network speed. If alongside the animation, you can display the total time (hopefully seconds) the user should wait then all the better.

4. Display Outcome

Mostly, the search results are expected to be accurate. But as a mobile application design company, Anteelo also pays close attention to error-prone queries that lead to a dead-end. What comes next shouldn’t be anybody’s guess but a rational step-by-step approach to get the right input from the user, as we find out in the upcoming sections.

Tackling “No Matches Found”

Never leave the customer staring at the wall. Even if the code does not find suitable results to display, offer something to the viewer. When there are no relevant results to show for, show alternative or remotely related products or the most popular search categories. You never know if that was the intent of the user. A blank page in such conditions leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the user who may take the app to be inefficient.

Correspond the Right Message

While displaying related products is one way to appease the user, what if the problem runs deeper than that. The backend could actually have malfunctioned and there is no shame in admitting and underlining the encountered problem to the user. But make sure you give hope that the issue may be resolved sooner than later.

Amazon does one of the best gimmicks in this area, with finesse. Everybody loves dogs, so Amazon developers thought why not use them to their advantage. Have a look at that error message.

Help Users Correct Entries

We all make typos. It’s normal. And most people sensibly accept their fault when an algorithm points it out. In case of Google searches, the majority of us are glad that the engine knows our search intent as it rectifies and suggests correctly spelled words. This doesn’t change with the app, but it can get better.

Without fail, whether you’re building an app inhouse or outsourcing the work to a mobile app design and development company, make sure the algos are trained to correct misspellings.

Create Category Headers

When the content is highly diversified it is best positioned under parent categories. Take the case of Spotify. It has millions of songs and they have demarcated specific search categories by which to sort them. Their parent tags are artists, songs, podcasts and if the user knows their genre, then they can jump right into it. Think of how you can distribute your content likewise.

Choose a Layout Template

Presentation has a lot to do with the way your floor the content. Netflix is a prime example, pun intended, to display a side-slide search functionality. It proved oxygenated air against the stale, tried and overused style of content flow that included carousels, and pagination. Infinite scrolls have also been proven to be addictive and equally effective.

On-demand Loading

Also known as lazy loading, it is a content optimization technique deployed to display the content that is intended for first, than bulk loading the page in one instance. It saves time and consumes lesser network bandwidth, and renders instant gratification to the user. Lazy loading allows developers to avoid code execution that can be delayed till the point the user demands further information.

Drawing it to a Close

Anteelo started out of an intuitive decision by a group of friends and today has a growing stature in the world of mobile app development. Despite the accolades, we keep our head to the ground, happily accept projects that we can wrap under our sheets and politely admit if something is beyond our means, which has thankfully never transpired. If intuitive design is what got you here, we bet you’d be amazed to know the full extent of our services.

NFT – A Comprehensive Overview

Posted on 01/06/202104/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Being tech-savvy and digitally social-friendly, we share many memes, infographics, jokes, artwork, and other digital assets with our peers and family either for the purpose of entertainment, to gain information, or to make the public aware of some event.

But have you ever wondered, who is the creator of those assets or where is the real origin of that digital property? The answer to these debriefs lies in NFT.

It all started in 2017 when the first-ever Non-fungible token was released named Crypto Punks on the American Studio Larva Lab’s Ethereum Blockchain. It was a two-person team back then which consisted of John Watkinson and Matt Hall. In the same year, another project was released named Crypto Kitties that went viral immediately after its arrival. It’s said to generate an investment of a whopping $12.5 million.

In this article, we will dive into non-fungible tokens and how did it start along with its popularity among masses, how to create non fungible tokens, characteristics that make NFT different, its benefits, risks and the upcoming future.

What is NFT

Fungible assets or fungibility denotes an item or an asset that has the ability to trade or get exchanged with a similar type of asset or good, whereas non-fungible assets tokens are unique digital assets whose ownership can be tracked on a blockchain development like Ethereum.

Non-Fungible Tokens aka the NFTs are digital assets or a type of digital certificate for owning goods or an asset that represents a great variety of intangible and tangible items such as paintings, virtual real estate, postcards, videos, and so on. NFTs cannot be replicated or equated with an asset that is similar, because every NFT asset is unique on its own.

To make things more clear to you, let’s take an example of a game ticket. If you give someone a baseball game ticket, then obviously you would take the baseball game ticket. Right? If that someone returns you a movie ticket, will you accept it?

The answer: No, you will not, because a movie ticket will not be as equally valuable as a baseball game ticket. If we place this example in place of NFT, then the game ticket (which is an NFT) cannot be replaced or traded with any ticket, as every baseball game ticket has its own unique identity.

The same is the case with NFT, where you cannot just exchange or trade NFT tokens with similar value tokens, as each token is different from one another and has its own uniqueness and rarity.

Non-fungible Tokens Examples

Owning a digital collectible has its benefits over a physical collectible like a stamp or rare coin. Each NFT consists of distinguishable information that makes it unique from other NFTs and makes the verification of authenticity for a collectible easier.

Like, for an artist, it makes the circulation of fake collectibles useless because the original item can be easily traced back to its legal user. Also, in comparison to other cryptocurrencies, you can’t exchange NFTs directly with anyone and the reason is the same – they’re all non-identical/dissimilar. For example, if you’ve got two NFCs on a single platform, they still won’t be the same despite being a part of the collection or having the same size and color. Let us see some examples of NFT Projects:

Blockchain Heroes– It is an original trading card series highlighting the similarities between personalities in the crypto and blockchain space.

Decentraland– In this game the players are allowed to buy the virtual world owned by the users. The owner of the virtual space can monetize their world with shops, advertising, etc.

Prospectors.io– It is a blockchain-based game, where the owned assets by the players are given to them in form of blockchain, and players earn NFT based on their gameplay.

Gods unchained– It is a digital collectible card game or online collectible card game, where the cards are in the form of NFTs that can be freely bought and sold.

CryptoKitties– It is a famous NFT game that includes breeding and collecting cats. These digital cats took NFTs to the mainstream with each token having distinctive ”cattributes”.

The History of NFT – How and Why Did it Start?

There are some arguments around the first appearance of NFTs. Colored coins are speculated to be the first NFTs to exist. Colored coins are depictions of real-world assets on the blockchain.

The mention of Colored Coins originated from a blog post in early 2012 by Yoni Assia, titled “bitcoin 2.X (aka Colored Bitcoin) — initial specs.” It is said that Colored Coins supported experimentation and laid the groundwork for NFTs.

Then came the trading of Rare Pepes on Ethereum and after this finally the first-ever Non-Fungible Token was released named Crypto Punks.

Afterward, a company named Rare Bits emerged as a marketplace and exchange portal for NFTs and raised $6 million in investment. The ideology of NFTs made possible a collectible card game that’s known as Gamedex nowadays and raised more than $800,000 in the initial days itself. Presently, a digital artist in America named Beeple launched his work named “Every day. The First 5000 Days”, which got sold for $69 million (42329.453 ETH). It’s one of the first artworks with NFT to be listed in some of the most important auction houses.

Additionally, in a recent deal, NBA and Dapper Labs launched the beta version of NBA TopShot Collectible and Tradable NFT-based apps in partnership. They’ve been working on this since 2018 and launched it in the first half of 2020. The collectible contains tokens with data and multimedia smashed together in the form of packs.

Reason Behind NFT’s Sudden Popularity

Throughout time, the NFTs are used across numerous industries and today they’re known commonly as Ethereum Tokens based on ERC-721. Several amazing features make NFTs popular these days:

The complete data of NFT is stored securely in Blockchain which means the tokens can never be removed, destroyed, or replicated no matter what.
The main source of value for NFTs is their scarcity. Although NFT developers can make an infinite number of tokens, they’re kept limited purposefully to maintain their value.
NFTs are entirely indivisible which means they can’t be divided like Bitcoins into smaller denominations.
With the capabilities of Blockchain, NFTs can be easily tracked back to their real owner and eradicates the need for third-party verification forever

*Fun Fact* Bitcoins are completely fungible and can be traded while maintaining a standard value even after the exchange. NFTs cannot be directly exchanged with anyone else unlike regular cryptocurrencies such as Monero, Ethereum, and Bitcoin.

Distant Characteristics of NFTs – What Does it Include?

1. Non-Interoperable

As NFTs follow the standard ERC-721, they’re considered to be non-interoperable which means the information stored in them can’t be exchanged or used in any manner.

2. Rare

Presently, the total number of NFTs is very less in the world and they’re very scarce. This not only makes them rare but also makes their value high. In simple terms, the lesser the number of NFs, the pricier they’ll be.

3. Indestructible

The NFTs are stored and managed through Blockchain that results in a greater level of security for them. This means they can never be destroyed or removed at any cost.

4. Indivisible

You can’t send a portion of non-fungible tokens to anyone (unlike other cryptocurrencies) because they’re non-fungible and don’t have a defined value. For instance, one bitcoin will possess the same value after transfer but NFT won’t.

5. Unique

Resonating with real artwork, NFTs use blockchain to stay apart from the crowd and determine the authenticity of a state of art. It also allows you to distinguish original items from their replicated copies.

The Working Methodology of NFTs

NFTs are unique crypto tokens that are managed on a blockchain. Thus, blockchain acts as the decentralized ledger that traces the ownership and transaction history of each NFT, which has a code and a unique ID, and other metadata that no other token can duplicate.

The process of creating NFTs can be done through contract-enabled blockchains with the help of appropriate tools and support. Ethereum was one of the first widely used EOS, NEO, and now it also includes NFT standards. The tokens along with their smart contracts allow adding detailed information such as the owner’s identity and so on.

This process provides NFTs the attributes of scarcity and royalties that make it attractive when coupled with digital media:

Scarcity

When we talk about scarcity, we mean that the owner gets to decide the scarcity of their assets. For example, if we take an example of a ticket to any sporting event or a concert, then there the owner decides how many tickets to be sold. Same way in NFT, the creator can decide how many replicas should be there. So these replicas are there with a slight difference to each one of them.

In another example, the owner can create NFT token only one, making it a special rare collectible. In any case, each of the NFT will have its own unique identity, such as a bar code on every cloth or ticket that looks similar to each other but is uniquely different.

Royalties

NFTs are coded with software code (called smart contracts) that governs the prospects such as verifying the ownership and managing the transferability of the NFTs. Also, NFTs can get programmed beyond the basics of ownership and transferability like any software application that incorporates a variety of applications and functionality (which also involves the linking of NFT to other digital assets).

For example, a smart contract could be created in such a way that some NFTs automatically allocate a share of the amount paid for any sale of the NFT, that is pay the royalties to the original owner.

When somebody creates an NFT, they are composing the smart agreement code that administers the NFT’s characteristics, which are added to the blockchain where the NFT is managed. Numerous blockchains can be used to handle NFTs, including Ethereum (with its established ERC-721 and ERC-1155 smart contract principles), Flowchain, and Wax, all of which make use of similar processes. Prominently, certain NFT marketplaces function with certain blockchains, thus the choice of blockchain to be used for NFT can have real implications for the seller, if not taken proper decisions.

Non-fungible Tokens Use Cases Across Multiple Industries

1. Gaming

Majority of the games have their virtual currency within their ecosystem that helps users make their progress easier. With that said, accounts with numerous purchased commodities have a great demand in an ever-expanding unregulated market. The different uses of NFTs will allow players to easily trade in-game collectibles with proper validation and security.

2. Digital Assets

For digital assets like house plans, mock-ups, themes, and domains, NFTs are certainly a perfect match. Moreover, digital real estate in games like Decentral Land is getting popular these days. They allow players to purchase and develop a set of spaces in a virtual world. The addition of NFT can make sure original creators can be traced back to these items.

3. Identity Theft

The things that represent identity and can be digitized such as medical records and academic qualifications can make use of NFTs to prevent identity theft. Furthermore, digital artists can also use it to convert their artworks and establish unique copyright for them. It also helps in separating counterfeits from the original.

4. Digital Collectibles

It’s a no-brainer that NFTs are rare and they find their major use in collectibles and art. With the addition of this token, the authenticity and ownership of a collectible or artwork can be easily verified. This also allows an artist to prevent their work from being misappropriated or pirated. NFT has already started to be used in cards and merchandise.

5. Identification and Certification

NFTs contain a unique set of information about an asset or a good programmed into them. This makes them a perfect match for issuing certificates, identities, qualifications, and licenses. The identification or certification can be issued directly through the blockchain as an NFT to make it traceable back to the source.

When the concepts of NFT are clear, we can clearly see the benefits of a blockchain of smart contracts that become a potent force for change.

Non-fungible Tokens Benefits

Ownership Rights

A non-fungible token can be utilized to address something extraordinary, both in the digital world and in reality. This has been utilized for collectibles and gaming in the digital world (demonstrating someone claims a particular CryptoKitty or item), yet it could similarly be applied to unique items in the real world – like houses, vehicles, craftsmanship, or potentially even personalities. It could likewise be utilized to allow specific access, giving access to Airbnb at specific occasions or for air travel tickets.

Customization Approach

Non-fungible tokens can be safely unlike other tokens that can’t be. Smart agreements/contracts and fungible tokens could possibly enact a portion of the functions of non-fungible tokens. However, in the non-fungible token market, all the information is held by the token itself.

The token can have additional information allocated to it which could incorporate standard options like the name and the ownership, but could be extended to areas like the history of the token and related data – an image of the house the token represents, the previous owners of a vehicle the token represents, or the count of character skins in a game with a similar model type the token represents.

Secure Trade

Generally, transferring the ownership of physical or digital items is at risk of fraud, and as such is either difficult in its execution or sometimes it is basically not permitted. With the security of blockchain and the uniqueness of non-fungible tokens, exchanging anything addressed by the token would be a much less complex and more effective process. As a token, it might actually permit the responsibility of ownership of items to be transferred across platforms or even be interoperable across various services like games or NFT marketplaces.

There is a mixed bag of characteristics when it comes to the characteristics of NFT. With every benefit there are risks that have to be taken into account to prove it.

Risks Associated With NFT

Valuations

Purchasing an NFT, similar to any collectible is a risky bet with its value going up. Unlike Blockchain asset tokenization trading cards or buying a real asset, NFTs are an up-and-coming market so there is no guarantee that there is going to be a similar kind of demand on digital assets.

If there is no demand for the NFT you buy, you could end up paying an enormous sum for something that decreases in value or is simply un-sellable. You could also make your own NFT however there is no assurance of a buyer which could lead you to waste your time and money.

Storage

Sales in NFT are recorded through blockchain technology, which demonstrates ownership. The real NFTs are made and stored through marketplaces and platforms like Open Sea or Rarible.

If by any chance these platforms get shut, there will be no assurance that you would have the option to access the work. This makes it less secure than having a physical art hanging on a wall or gaming tickets or trading cards that won’t just simply vanish.

Regulation

There is no regulation of NFTs so there is a lot of trust required. You need to believe that the NFT you are purchasing is a unique piece of art or work and hasn’t been replicated from somewhere else or you could face a copyright issue.

Also, if regulators and administrators get concerned regarding this thriving business, then there could be crackdowns on platforms and limitations on how much collectors can contribute. This could lead to decreasing the NFT token market value.

Hot Potato Effect

NFT games can have a ”hot potato” effect. Meaning that the players buy an asset to sell it for a profit, but if the market collapses, it can lead to a huge loss.

For example, you have a gaming sword and you are longing to sell it for a higher price than it was previously. Now the thing is, as long as someone is willing to buy, you will make a profit, but if there is no one to purchase the asset or if the market collapses, then you are at loss.

Future of NFTs

Whatever the risks, the future looks promising for NFTs as the total market for them crossed a whopping $100 million by the end of July 2020. Experts in the crypto industry even speculate that 40% of new crypto users will use NFTs as an entry point.

With the decentralized finance industry surpassing $4 billion in value, it is evident that the NFT space is set to grow exponentially in the days to come.

The Takeaway

You may have already figured out that it’s still in its early stage of development. Therefore, you can easily expect numerous cutting-edge platforms based on NFTs in the coming years.

Talking about the present, it’s transitioning from Crypto Kitties and gaming to digital identity, painting, and other use cases. This means that the market is still raw in terms of experimentation. For a new-age entrepreneur, this would mean a sea-full of opportunities to enter and rule the space in their sector. We are here to help. Share your NFT-based project idea with us.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Pivot Your Startup Successfully

Posted on 01/06/202104/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Slack was not always the messaging platform that we have grown to love and use. The platform, compared to what it is now was born as a very small feature of a Tiny Speck game called Glitch.

After seeing the success and demand for the in-built messaging feature, the founders chose to launch it as a brand new application, while bidding adieu to Glitch.

This route which they took was an example of a lean methodology concept that we call startup pivot. Let’s get you some perspective into what is a pivot in a business model, why should startups consider it, and the best growth hacking strategies for startups to go about pivot business.

Table Of Content

What Is A Pivot in Business?
Know When Should You Pivot In Startup
What are the Different Types of Pivots?
Successful Tech Pivot in Business Stories
How To Startup Pivoting: The best strategies
Pivot Startup Pyramid: How We Help Founders Make Changes In Different Business Areas
What are the Alternatives to Business Pivot

What Is A Pivot in Business?

A pivot is primarily a shift in the business strategy which is applied for testing out a new approach related to the startup business model after receiving feedback. It is one of the core concepts of the lean startup method – a reason why it is also known as pivot lean startup. When we align lean principles in our software development process, we always consider making a scope for app pivot.

Many times, companies only have one question to address and need only one aspect to be changed (details in our pivot business pyramid below). To delve on it further, here are some examples of pivoting which you would have not considered a “pivot”

Turn one product feature into a new product itself
Turn one product into a feature of a bigger product
Change a platform from app to web app or vice versa
Focus on a different customer set
Use different technology to build a product

Know When Should You Pivot

With a number of hot-shot tech giants like Instagram, Facebook, and Slack, etc. having popularized pivot success, the new-age founders have grown to believe that pivot can be a great success formula for them too. But the truth is that pivoting must only be considered when you have exhausted all the other options. Here are the factors that can help you decide when to absolutely pivot in business model.

Your company is always trying and failing to overrule competition
There is only one aspect of your business/product that is getting the most attention
There is no response for your offering in the market
Your business objective and expectation has changed.

What are the Different Types of Pivots?

1. Pivot In Your Existing Market

It is one of the most common pivot business types. Businesses tend to change the direction in the market they are already in without offering any new market information or creating a new consumer segment. It is also the one of the pivoting business strategy that is most likely to fail. Since, businesses remain in their market in place of finding new areas to expand in.

2. Reposition Your Product

At times, an element of your product might show greater adoption potential compared to your entire application. This is what led to the creation of Slack. What makes it difficult for businesses in this situation is whether or not to let go of their legacy business. There are two approaches to handle the situation when you are looking for pivot in business strategy:

Launch a new branded service or product, keeping the legacy business intact
Launch a new business altogether and shut down the old business.

The choice of it depends on the cash flow situation. If your legacy business is profitable and seeing a constant inflow of customers, you can think of keeping it intact.

3. Do Something Entirely New

This is the last type of pivot business model and the most extreme. In this case, you let go of your idea to explore something new altogether. But if you are married to the idea of bottoms-up start, it would be worth considering shutting the present company and using the money for funding the new business.

Successful Tech Pivot in Business Stories

Instagram

Instagram is one of the most famous pivot software startup stories.

Instagram is today one of the biggest social media platforms. Owned by Facebook, it is estimated to be over $100 Billion. But before becoming a social media behemoth, Instagram was a prototype known as Burbn that was made with check-in features, photo post options, and the capability to gain points, in addition to other capabilities.

The founders, Mike Krieger and Systrom soon realized that the UI was too cluttered and thus they pivoted. They limited their Instagram startup software development to posting, commenting, and liking features – making it one of the most simplistic visual platforms in the market.

Twitter

Twitter was launched as Odeo back in 2005. It used to be a platform for finding and subscribing podcasts. But with iTunes making it a concentrated space, Odeo chose to pivot.

Jack Dorsey, the future co-founder of Twitter then came up with the idea of a microblogging platform wherein the contacts could share and read each other’s updates in the real time.

Today, Twitter has become a more than 355 million users’ brand that is being used to not just share updates but also for citizen journalism, social activism, and live tweets.

YouTube

YouTube as a brand needs zero introductions. With over 2 million users coming on the platform every month, the brand is the ruler of the video sharing platform market.

However, YouTube did not start as your homely video sharing platform where you go to watch DIYs or follow A-listers. It was a dating website which enabled singles to upload their videos – sharing whom they were and what they were looking for in a partner.

The founders soon pivoted and allowed people to upload videos of all kinds – something that makes YouTube what it is today.

Slack

Stewart Butterfield’s company Tiny Speck started creating a game known as Glitch. The idea after a brief launch was announced unviable. Its internal communication tool, however, developed to establish communication between Canada and US offices emerged out as a real opportunity.

The messaging platform, named as Slack was founded in 2014 and went on to become a unicorn in the first year itself.

How To Pivot Your Startup: The best strategies

1. Develop a prototype before you pivot

If you are thinking about pivoting startup, develop a prototype first and see if people would use it, find it valuable and give feedback. Feedback at the beginning stages is important for determining where the impact of the product would be the greatest. The prototype would also enable you to identify whether the product is a good fit for the brand.

2. Pick goals which align with your business vision

As an entrepreneur it’s important to know how your vision statement is changing. Gone is the time when there used to be one mission and vision statement. With the changing market, the statements are also frequently changing. It is important to reevaluate what needs to be done and then draw a business model pivot to meet the new objective.

3. Ensure your pivot give out growth opportunities

Pivoting is a useful next step when you have encountered roadblocks. But if you pivot in a completely new direction without giving much attention to the plan, you would fail again. To ensure you don’t hit another roadblock, we would recommend two things – A. not expanding in the current market, since you have already explored it and B. perform an extensive market research. In case you find the market to be too small, the customer base too diverse, and a lot of competition, it won’t be beneficial to pivot. One way to go about this that we recommend is hosting a product discovery workshop.

4. Consider alternative technology

The technology world is not what it used to be a decade ago, even 2 years ago. For a startup to pivot, it is extremely important to be on top of the technology trends. Only when your business is able to incorporate the latest technologies you would be able to pivot with the probability to succeed.

5. Keep the investors in loop

At every pivot stage and when you are taking the decision, make sure the investors are kept in the loop. In case you think the company’s mission and objective is going to change, start talking about it with your internal stakeholders including investors in advance at least six to eight months in advance. Any drastic change without any discussion with the investors can harm the relationship and make pivoting unachievable.

Pivot Startup Pyramid: How We Help Founders Make Changes In Different Business Areas

Over the course of our establishment as a startup app development company, we have held a number of pivot business consulting sessions with our clients looking to make a difference in how they have been conducting business or in their value set.

We make use of a Pivot Pyramid to help our partnered founders evaluate which business area to change in order to drive maximum growth. This is the same pyramid that investors use when measuring up your business.

Layer 5: Customers

The customers are the base of any startup. Everything – from the issue you solve, product you develop, and the technology it is built on, depends on who the customers are. You can change and pivot the customers, but doing this will make you re-evaluate the entire pyramid.

Shopify started out by selling snowboards online before realizing that the tools to develop modern day ecommerce platforms are not enough – thus giving birth to the modern day Shopify that has helped more than 100,000 SMBs sell online.

Layer 4: Problem

There can be instances where the customers’ choice is right but the problem that you are looking to solve does not matter much or is not existing. If you pivot here, you would have to relook at the solution, tech, and growth plan.

Criteo began as a recommendation engine for the online retailers. They then went on to become a successful brand which helped online retailers perform retargeting campaigns.

Layer 3: Solution

If you have identified the problems which your customers are facing, the next step is to develop a product which would resonate with the customers than the ones in the market. The changes made at this stage, like in case of other elements of the pyramid, should be growth focused.

Meerkat achieved growth through this route when they began live streaming videos on Twitter.

Layer 2: Technology

The technology choice is the key to develop your solution – one that we focus heavily on when performing app development for startup, even if the products relate with the customers the technology choice should be hindering your retention and growth.

An example of how technology setbacks can affect a business growth in the Friendster failure. The brand failed becoming a mainstream social network because they were not able to keep their servers up with the demand.

Facebook pivoted this way when they let go of Python language.

Layer 1: Growth

Every change in the pivot pyramid should be growth driven. But a great number of experiments does not call for any change in the technology or product. This is why marketers tend to experiment with the startup growth strategies to avoid the growth channels from becoming saturated or overly expensive.

Airbnb took the growth route for pivoting by posting their listings on Criaglist. This, in turn, boosted visibility and led to higher demand.

What are the Alternatives to Business Pivot

Value Iteration

Sometimes all a business needs is a tweaked product or offering iteration. While Mac and MacBook are one of the hottest commodities now, remember the time when analysts predicted Apple’s demise because of a stale hardware set in the ‘80s and ‘90s? Apple then added newer product lines like iPhone and personal computers.

In instances where you don’t have a product or it matches the market trend, you can think of revisiting your brand message – ensuring that it is aligned with your brand’s value.

Develop a spinoff brand

A spinoff company, by definition, is a division created by a parent company, which even though being an extension of the original brand is treated like an individual entity.

Take an example from Shelter Insurance. It was established in the 1940s – a time when the insurance market used to be extremely relationship-driven. But with the advent of the internet, the consumers could now interact with the insurance companies. However, if Shelter Insurance abandoned the model, it would have lost a massive number of their customers.

What Shelter did is that they created their spinoff company – Say Insurance – for delivering an online-first experience. Both of the brands provide auto insurance, but Say Insurance is completely focused on the Gen Z and Millennial user base.

Their strategy worked quite perfectly. The parent company continued to grow in the established market, while the spinoff brand tapped into the new digital market.

Relook at your mission plan

Trying to grow too fast almost always ends up bad for any startup. It can be a better option to relook at your mission strategy and see where you deviated. Following that, realign your present efforts with your planned stage.

But doing this can get difficult.

To realign with its mission of “the only short haul, low fare, high frequency, point-to-point carrier in America,” Southwest Airlines went on to cut down a number of their routes. The decision was taken to free up the planes for the routes that were in greater demand.

Choosing a descent pricing strategy for your Mobile App

Posted on 29/05/202103/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

For every Apprenuer, building a great mobile application takes center stage. Since the startup app development process has been repeatedly talked about, a considerable amount of time and effort is spent on discovery, design, and development.

Sure, providing value to the end-users is the prime goal behind any app but pricing a digital product is an equally important aspect, one that should not be overlooked. It should be carefully determined to build a profitable and scalable mobile app business.

Product pricing strategy in marketing plays an instrumental role in getting your app the initial traction and visibility in the app store. How you determine the price of your product decides the success of your app in terms of the number of downloads and user retention in the long run.

But it is like walking on a tightrope- apps that are offered for free or at a relatively lower price gather greater market share and can penetrate in the market seamlessly while apps that are offered for a higher price have the potential to garner a good ROI.

So, how do you decide the right product pricing strategy? A lot of factors come into play when ascertaining the price for your app- market research, the value and functionality of your app, and the market competition. All this coupled with an understanding of consumer psychology is a must to run a successful mobile app business.

If you plan on building an app, or your product is in the development pipeline and you have not given much of an afterthought to this equally essential aspect, do not worry, we will break down what is a product pricing strategy, the popular pricing models for mobile apps and help you strategically determine the right price for your application.

What is a product pricing strategy?

Pricing strategy is how you make money from your mobile application. Every breakthrough idea has some business model behind it. While initially, you may only be concerned about rapidly launching a Minimum Viable Product, having a pricing strategy in place will only help you build a robust product.

Pricing a digital product may seem like an easy task, but it certainly isn’t. Play Store and App store are sprawling with millions of mobile applications and the types of pricing models for apps have evolved over time. But before we delve too deep into the types of mobile app pricing strategies and discuss their pros and cons, we would like to share some valuable insights that will help you make the right choice.

Product Pricing Strategy for Mobile Apps

1. Human Behaviour and psychology

Human psychology plays a fundamental role in determining the price of your product.

Consumers are keeping up with the rapid strides in technology. It is the growing rise in consumerism that steers the scope of advancements. Customers today are well-read, well informed and they always strive to make a conscious decision.

For every product, there are ten other alternatives available in the market, so how do you assure a customer will choose your product?

Simple, you must ensure that the perceived value of your product is greater than its price.

A customer should always feel that the price of your product is right and tapping into this segment becomes all the more easy when they do not have a reference point to begin with.

Before taking a decision, we humans tend to compare products with the alternatives available in the market and assess them for their pros and cons.

So, when determining the mobile app pricing strategy you must take into account other products available in the market, characterize your value proposition and ensure you are offering a greater value than your competitors.

2. What the market is willing to pay

The right pricing strategy should revolve around what the market is willing to pay. And to determine that, you must test your product at different price levels and see how the market responds.

An application has a recurring revenue stream. To stay competitive you need to tap on new functionality and offer regular updates. So it is essential to holistically view the recurring revenue model and not worry about the revenue per price point.

More often than not, mobile app developers offer a product for free to garner a huge user base and generate revenue from advertisements. But later on, when you offer an upgraded product for a certain price you had already devalued the product and can’t really sell it for more because the perceived value is low.

So, the ideal approach is to test your product at various price levels and see how the market reacts to it.

3. Build a product that users want

A product should be built with an aim to address user concerns and it must solve their problem. When you build something that users truly want, it is easy to decide the price. Look for factors that can enhance the value of your app- a stellar design, a splendid user journey.

To determine the mobile app pricing models you need to know the app development cost, which involves factors like the actual cost, the value the product offers and the money required to thrive it.

Having a sound knowledge of the current market trends is equally crucial and rolling out new updates and enhanced functionality is the key when opting for a penetrative pricing model.

4. Study the market and competitive landscape

Market-driven pricing is a great approach to arrive at an optimum price point for your mobile application. Studying the competitive landscape and analyzing your user base can help you discover opportunities where the competition is lacking.

For instance, launching your app at a relatively lower price than your competitors gives you an advantage in the market.

Understanding the market demand for a product and viewing it from the customer’s perspective helps a great deal in deciding the right price.

It is crucial to establish early on what makes your product special and what value does the competition in the market demand from your app.

5. Robust marketing strategy

In today’s fast-paced environment, the power and reach of social media is expanding every day. In such a scenario, backing your pricing strategy with a robust marketing strategy is more like a necessity. Having an understanding of the current market trends along with a marketing strategy in place helps in maximum user acquisition. To retain users in the long run, rolling out enhancements in every quarter is a good strategy.

So, leverage the power of social media to create the buzz around your product and gain initial traction. Don’t be fixated on the top of the funnel, it is ideal to look at things holistically. Curating rich content for social media platforms ensures the word about your app reaches far and wide and generates the maximum number of downloads.

6. Affordability

Besides offering the desired functionality, your app should be affordable for customers. It is only fair to offer value to your customers at a decent price.

Penetration pricing strategy helps businesses attract new customers due to the low cost. It is considered a classic strategy because it uses behavioural psychology to drive customers to purchase the product. The pricing for any digital product should also take into account the sustainability of your business.

7. Understand what your product and target customers demand

It is crucial to realize early on that no one size fits all. What may have worked for someone else, would not necessarily work for you. There will be new opportunities that you can tap into to app development for startup.

Think out of the box, be unconventional in your ways, and look out for alternate models to generate revenue.

For instance, the wide pool of data generated from your app could be of value to someone. Healthcare apps generate a huge amount of data that is useful for doctors and researchers.

8. Paid vs free

Deciding, whether to launch an app for free or paid, involves a couple of factors, like the required amount of users. If you want to gather a huge user base at once, free is the go-to choice.

With paid apps, users expect more features and functionalities. They certainly do not like paying each and every time a new enhancement is rolled out.

Also, when the customers pay to avail in-app purchases, you must ensure it offers sufficient value.

Taking cues from what the competition is doing is a good practice to establish yourself in the market. You cannot choose a paid pricing model when others in your niche are offering similar functional apps for free. However, if your app has advanced functionality and a unique proposition which is not found in similar apps, users can be willing to pay more.

Types of Pricing Strategies for Apps

1. Free

We don’t usually get a lot of things for free. The ‘Free’ tag is not just a pleasant surprise but also a great tool to attract a large pool of customers. The same applies to the free app pricing model.

As the name suggests, these apps are free to download, and in most cases, the primary source of income is through advertisements. Free apps are often seen as a great tool to attract a large pool of users and retain them in the long run. They are meant to facilitate communication and customer service.

Depending on the purpose of your application, there are two types of free pricing strategies to choose from. The former is a Completely free strategy, which is used when you already have a well-established product or a service in place. In such a scenario, the app is an add- on tool for the users. The goal behind completely free apps is not to make money directly from the app but redirect potential customers to other revenue streams.

For instance, free apps involve features like coupons, discount notices and other pertinent information which encourages users to take action. The app is used to spark interest, support the marketing strategy and drive users to other revenue channels.

The latter is an In-app advertisement strategy. In this strategy, the apps are offered for free but users see adds while using the app. Primarily, gaming apps use this strategy to generate ad revenue. With in-app advertisements, the key is to ensure that the advertisements that are being displayed are relevant to the users.

There are services through which you can easily filter the ads by user relevance and format and ensure the ads in your app actually pique the users’ interest.

According to Statista, mobile app pricing statistics indicate that the distribution of free and paid apps is such that 96 percent of apps in the Google Play store are freely available whereas in iOS 90.3% apps are free.

2. Freemium

The freemium pricing model is a modified version of the free pricing strategy. This model is highly popular and widely used by businesses. Freemium apps can be downloaded for free but include limited functionality and features. To generate money from these apps, in-app purchase opportunities are created. There are three freemium strategies to choose from depending on the tiers, features, and incentives.

Two-tiered approach – It includes apps that customers can download and use for free but there is a premium functionality that can only be availed upon payment. This strategy is widely used in gaming apps where users have to buy in-app currencies, extra lives or upgrade to additional levels.
The second model includes apps which offer full functionality but only for a limited period of time. The idea behind this strategy is that users can see the vision and get familiar with the app’s utility, and after a while, they will be willing to avail the services.
The last model includes apps where all the features and functionalities are free except it comes with built-in advertisements. The catch here is that a small amount is charged from users to offer an advertisement free app.

3. Paid

The name clearly gives it away, for paid apps, customers have to pay to download the app. Due to the huge popularity of free and freemium apps, the paid model is considered least effective.

In case you opt for a paid pricing model, it is essential to back it up with a compelling marketing effort. To drive users to purchase your app over a free equivalent, you should have an effective marketing strategy in place. Besides the description of the app in the app store, a potential customer must be equipped with the value you are offering with your product.

With a paid app, users tend to have higher expectations. But once you manage to attract a user, they will turn into a loyal customer if your app offers the perceived value.

To leverage the paid pricing strategy, many brands opt for a week free trial. It is a good tactic to approach potential long-term users by showcasing what your app is all about and giving them the opportunity to make a choice.

4. Paymium

Paymium is the amalgamation of freemium and paid model. For paymium apps, the users not only pay for the app but also pay an additional cost to avail an added functionality. Although it is not a widely used strategy, it does have the potential to generate great revenue streams.

This pricing model works well for music and social networking apps. This strategy can rapidly gain traction if exciting content, unique functionality, and useful features are introduced on a regular basis.

Conclusion

The app market is growing by leaps and bounds. To penetrate in the market with ease and carve a niche, you must choose the right pricing strategy for your mobile app and take the aforementioned insights into due consideration. Pricing model plays a fundamental role in determining an app’s success. It is essential to choose the right monetization strategy as early as possible. Your product pricing strategy should meet market and user expectations, offer the perceived value and help you accomplish business goals.

Finest Diagrams Explicitly Demonstrating Product Management Concepts

Posted on 27/05/202103/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

There are a lot of things product managers are accountable and responsible for. A product manager is not only liable to strategize by creating a roadmap but also needs to articulate the release cycle of a new product to the team along with everything that comes in between.

They are also required to have the expertise in knowing how to identify the priority tasks and manage the team accordingly. Not just this, but mobile product managers are also given the responsibility to analyze the features added to a product (mobile app) and whether they are in sync with the client’s goals.

All in all, every process, activity, and decision associated with a product is synchronized and aligned by the mobile product manager. What helps these product managers achieve their KRAs is a certain set of skills.

Now, obviously they will be required to explain certain product management ideas to their team members so that they all are on the same page. But, the thing to wonder is – how do they explain all the product management concepts and key ideas?

Well, I think a few useful diagrams for product managers do the trick. If you are interested in knowing what these diagrams are and how and when they are used by mobile product managers, stick till the end.

Diagram 1 – Communication bottlenecks

It is understood that as a manager, you need to be aware of what is going on in your team and how the team members are managing their tasks. But, it is ludicrous for any person to be involved in every communication and decision – one person cannot handle all the things on one’s own, right? Isn’t this why the delegation was invented?

Now, it is natural you would want to be included in all the important inter/intra-team conversations, but you need to reflect on one thing – is it necessary? Is it something you should do by putting aside your other responsibilities?

The answer is – analyze whether the team is capable of communication which is not dependent on you. And if it is, you need to make some conscious decisions to ensure that important things like fluent communication are not solely dependent on you. A diagram that can effectively explain the case in point is given below.

Let’s say, a Web Engineer needs to discuss something with the Product Analyst and then the PA says they need to discuss something with the iOS developer in this regard. Now, the Web Engineer should ideally approach the PA and iOS developer directly, instead of being dependent on the PM (as shown in the image on the left).

The diagram on the left shows the dependency of the team on product manager to communicate with other members of other teams – something that adversely affects the workflow and slows it down. And on the right is the diagram displaying an efficient communication flow that is not dependent, instantly eliminating unnecessary points of contact.

Diagram 2: Waterfall vs agile

Though there are many resources out there on the internet participating in the debate of the Agile vs Waterfall approach, it may still seem like a vague concept in relation to product management. So let’s clear the fog of ambiguity.

It is generally known that the cost of mobile app development is calculated on the basis of hours it takes to develop that product.

Now, if the product manager of that mobile app development company chooses to use the Waterfall approach (i.e., a large release of the product), this would mean that the product will be launched all in one go.

Now, when a product is released, it is expected to become an instant hit – something which won’t be easy in this instance, since the product is launched all at once and is definitely a home to some issues. The value that they will get from this release won’t be equivalent to the investment (time) made by the developers. It is because they would require to fix the issues from the start.

On the contrary, the agile approach supporting small releases and iterations would show instant value results, since you are simultaneously identifying errors and fixing them. The diagram above clearly shows the difference in the end result of choosing these product management approaches.

Diagram 3: Representation of delivery size

When it comes to delivering a product on time, it is a very crucial part of the whole development process. It can literally make or break the future of any mobile app. If time-to-market is too long, some other app could capture the market and it would render the mobile app in question futile.

Here is a representation of the sizes of initiatives taken when developing an application –

The diagram on the left shows the throughput of the delivery size that only deals with working on big projects (large chunks of work at the same time). It is absolutely clear that working only on big projects of a product would create a blockage at one point of time in the future, since these projects would require more time, attention, resources, etc. And if anything goes wrong, the impact would be devastating on the whole process, inevitably increasing the time-to-market.

{Also read our article on “Project Managers vs Product Managers: Difference, roles & challenges”}

The diagram on the right is a classic “to do”. The advantages of adopting the Agile approach have rippled down to this stage in the product management process as well. This approach advocates the mixture of performing small tasks with large chunks of work (blue), something that we also follow at Anteelo.

As visible in the diagram, unlike the one on the left, here small chunks of work (Pink) can easily pass through the funnel (can be done easily). If these prove successful, the product managers can carry on with this idea (yellow circles) and invest completely. And if otherwise is the case, then they can iterate again and invest accordingly.

{Check out this extensively detailed article on “10 most important documents product managers must prepare”}

Diagram 4: Level of leadership involvement

The diagram below comprises two models for elaborating this product management concept. One on the left displaying the initiative size, number of tasks done at a time, and the risk factor in them, and the other concerned with the level of involvement of the product managers (leadership) correspondent to these tasks and initiatives.

The one on the left is a pyramid of tasks/initiatives to be performed by the team. The bottom of the pyramid means many tasks being performed at once, and the diagram on the right shows the amount of involvement with respect to these menial tasks having low to none risk.

As we move to the top of the pyramid, the number of tasks decreases while the risks associated with these tasks increase as well, this is where the product manager MUST be consulted, while in the formed he/she can be just informed. This diagram would help not just help mobile product managers but also the team members in knowing when to depend on the leadership.

Diagram 5: Analyzing segmentation value

There are a few practices that organizations are accustomed to following. One of them being the habit of optimizing for the average instead of a segment. Meaning, they tend to focus on the average instead of particular segments that need improving.

In the circumstances where the targets and hypotheses are fairly broad, it becomes challenging for the product managers and development teams to create an impact via product. It is because you are here trying to satisfy a variety of targets at the same time, which is not at all possible.

Diagrams, such as given below are a way to analyze each segment for identifying which ones are impacting the performance of others. All this to resolve the prevailing issues.

The diagram above consists of three hypothetical experiments 1,2, and 3 with segments A, B, C, and D. Out of three experiments, in the first case, there was an uplift in the segment A, followed by a decrease in the second case, and third with no change.

Taking an individual look, in experiment 1, segment A performed well with others, except segment B. Now, the diagram has highlighted the decline in this segment juxtaposed to the others. This could help product managers in finding the reasons for this happening which will eventually improve the average in the longer run.

A similar situation occurs in experiment 3, where segments A, C, D underperform in opposition segment B which showed significant change. Again, a study would clear out the reasons for this happening.

These useful diagrams for product managers can easily be customized to one’s needs, irrespective of which industry the product managers are operating in. As far as Anteelo is concerned, I think these models really help our teams in simplifying the process and maintain open communication between inter/intra-teams.

Digital Trends in Insurance Industry – Significance

Posted on 26/05/202103/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

The health insurance sector is finding itself in a whirlwind of change. For insurers, this means getting an understanding of the domain’s benefits and tech stack powering the change.

New-age healthcare space or digital health ecosystem, as it’s usually called, is engineered to keep patients on a pedestal. The transformation of healthcare has created an ecosystem where every medical industry stakeholder and process has been operating to keep patients at the center stage.

While this patient-first system is coming organically to the caregivers, insurers – the third key stakeholder of the healthcare sector – are finding the transition a bit challenging. In this article, we are going to look into the capabilities that payers need to inhibit to survive the growing competitiveness in the digital health insurance world.

The insurance industry is staring at a cultural shift that will put people’s well-being at a primary stage. The shift has forced the sector to move from paying financial compensation to injury, illness, or loss towards the end goal of mitigating or preventing them.

A key role in bringing this shift to health insurance digital transformation has been brought along by technology adoption by every custom healthcare software development company.

In this article, we will dive into the technologies insurance companies can adopt in the digital health services landscape. But first, let us look into the benefits that would make the domain an active participant in the changing landscape of digital transformation in healthcare.

The Benefits of a Digitalized Insurance Sector

1. Digital solutions help people make healthy decisions

Digital healthcare solutions powered by wearables and insurance-inclined apps help people: prevent diseases, better diagnostic, manage a chronic condition, limit lifestyle risks. A number of modern users expect their health and care providers, insurers to provide them digital wellness solutions.

New-gen insurers, by offering consumer-centric programs like health quantification, etc. can meet this consumer expectation.

2. Digital platforms help insurers connect with the users

Digital tools and digital health platforms provide insurers the ability to give their clients a welcoming, interactive platform using which the insurers can create an ‘I care’ strategy. The platforms do not just act as a mode to have positive interactions with the customer but also gather data that can help make processes and values efficient.

3. Insurance digitalization help lower risk and cost

Digital healthcare services help make a detailed picture of users’ overall health. Upon the data, the insurers can create an approach that can be used for personalizing premiums through dynamic pricing. The data-driven approach also enables risk assessment that enables accelerated underwriting.

According to a Capgemini report, the use of data-driven assessment helps insurers adopt a more value-driven care model where the digital tools provide a transparent picture of the dynamic pricing model.

4. Digitalization in the insurance space optimize customer experience

Digital space helps healthcare insurance service providers optimize the customers’ experience by increasing the number of touchpoints and providing new services. Here are some of the use cases of how it happens:

Digital health insurance plans for managing personal health
Virtual healthcare delivery
Connected vehicle and smart-home solutions
Voice technology for advising customers.

5. Digital tools can secure data dominance

The insurance sector is producing more data than ever before. They have been building and scaling big data ecosystems to create visualized data sets that can suggest benefits plans according to the success factors.

Providers and healthcare app developers that are best able to use big data are delivering personalized customer experience, bettering retention, and are creating more accurate quotes – all at a lot faster speed compared to traditional approaches.

These and a plethora of other benefits are a guarantee that is dependent on the adoption of a new-gen technology set. Technology in health insurance has become a driving force that can take the domain towards end-to-end digitalization.

Let us take a closer look at some of the technologies we suggest our insurance sector partners, in our capacity as a healthcare app development company USA and India, to integrate into their solutions.

3 Technologies Aiding Insurance Digitalization

Machine learning

Insurers, as they process claims, gather a large amount of data from multiple sources. Incorporation of machine learning in the process and healthcare mobility solutions can help build customer relationship management systems that offer targeted service and eliminate churn.

The industry is also exploring ways to use the technology for helping doctors deliver proactive, timely, and cost-effective care to patients.

Internet of Things

With over 1 billion wearable devices active in the market, the healthcare industry is no more unsure about the technology’s capabilities. The biosensors present inside the wearables are getting more sophisticated to become links in the digitalized healthcare system which lays emphasis on home-based treatments.

Through the data collected by the sensors, insurance companies can help wary customers of problem signs before they develop into diseases.

Distributed ledgers

When a patient interacts with a healthcare system, they talk to a number of parties: doctors, pharmacists, insurance companies, etc. A distributed ledger can enable all the stakeholders to be on the same platform, making the interactions and following transmissions, transactions transparent and real-time.

An example of this can be seen in how the patients no more have to wait for the insurance companies to release payment since the latter is updated of the stage where they are at in the healthcare system.

One of the key resources in the healthcare economy is data – a resource that places insurers in the central of the provider side of the digitalization landscape. A number of insurance companies are making use of data to become active participants in healthcare transformation, while there are still a number of providers who are waiting for the digitalization lighting to strike.

Whatever the case may be on the insurer end, the other side of the reality is that members are appreciating insurers’ digitalization efforts by increasing the usage of value-added services. For an insurance company, it means that now is the golden time to enter the space. We can help you.

Our team can help you make an infrastructure that can bring you on a shared transparent, value-plus platform as your customers. Contact our team of insurance industry digitalization experts.

Phishing & Pharming: A Quick Overview

Posted on 25/05/202103/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Remember how we grew up learning fishing and farming as a source of earning money? Least did we know that this source of earning could be replicated as phishing and pharming cyber theft one day! The ever-evolving technology is not only offering efficient work resources but is also creating a path for cyber thieves to misuse it.Today, cyber thieves are honing their cybertheft skills to beat the latest technology and innovative security systems to create havoc in the cyber world. Both phishing & pharming, the two major types of cyber thefts are being infamously used to trick users into providing their personal information. Cybercriminals use both of these tactics to obtain the sensitive information of users, however, both of these tactics work with different methods. Proceed further to find out how.

Definition of Phishing

A phishing attack is basically social engineering and identity theft that generally targets users with the aim to con them into revealing their personal and confidential information. In this technique, hackers send spoofed emails in the name of a legitimate source to victims and trick them into clicking on a malicious link or attachment to acquire their personal information.

In many instances, these phishing scams use software or security vulnerabilities to install malicious software in the targeted user’s device. In any case, the human factor remains the key element in the successful phishing attempts of these cyber crooks.

Phishing attacks are not limited to email phishing as phishers use SMS (smishing) and voice messages (vishing) to trick victims into providing their information by impersonating a legitimate source. As a result, these phishing attacks have become so convincing that they have accounted for 90% of data breached in 2019!

Definition of Pharming

Often known as “phishing without a lure”, pharming is a scamming practice of installing malicious code on a computer system or server to misdirect targeted users to fraudulent websites without its knowledge. These fraudulent websites are the look-alike of the legitimate ones to trick and misguide the victim.

While the method stays different, the goal of stealing personal information such as login credentials, financial information, personal details, etc. remains the same. A user can fall victim to pharming even on clicking on an authentic link if the website’s domain name system (DNS) has been hijacked by a hacker.

Just like a phishing attack, the pharming attack is equally dangerous for users online because, in this social engineering scam, the chances of recognizing any lurking danger are very low. It is a hidden threat because a user will never know if the website is hijacked or not before handing over the personal information on request.

What is the Difference Between Phishing and Pharming?

To understand the difference between phishing and pharming, it is important to understand the vector Domain Name System (DNS). In order to carry out pharming scams, hackers misuse DNS as the main weapon vector. While phishing attempts are carried out by using spoofed websites, appearing to have come from legitimate entities, pharming relies on the DNS server level.

Unlike phishing, pharming doesn’t rely on bait like fake links to trick users. Instead, it compromises the DNS server and redirects users to a simulated website even if the user has inputted the correct web address. For instance, if a hacker launches a successful DNS cache poisoning attack, it will alter the fundamental web traffic flow to the targeted website.

While phishing includes other techniques like smishing, vishing, fax phishing (phaxing), etc., pharming includes techniques like DNS spoofing, DNS hijacking, DNS cache poisoning, and all the DNS altering scams. Both data thefts are nothing but evolving online robbery that can lead any organization to devastating consequences.

Comparatively, pharming is more insidious than phishing because hackers manipulate the DNS level and make it difficult for users to identify. Phishing on the other hand tops the list of the art of social engineering by luring victims effortlessly into submitting their sensitive information on the misdirected phished website.

How to Prevent Phishing and Pharming?

Both phishing and pharming are serious cyber threats to any organization today. Regardless of their differences, these cyber scams lead to the same consequence: loss of confidential data for malicious use. In order to secure your organization from these cyber attacks, follow these effective guidelines as cybersecurity measures:

Lookout for HTTPS in URLs

DNS spoofing doesn’t generally work on HTTPS websites. Even if the hacker manages to spoof a legitimate website and redirect a server under its control, it will not be of any use.

Check for Suspicious-looking Emails

Phishing emails more than often consists of grammatical errors and suspicious-looking content. Also, the source of the email address in most cases is unknown, so it is always better to cross-check any unfamiliar or unexpected email.

Cybersecurity Awareness Training

We can’t ignore the fact that employees are the most vulnerable link in the chain of cybersecurity. In order to strengthen this link, it is important to provide employees with proper security awareness training to guide them to identify the potential cyber risks.

Brand Monitoring

Always keep track of how your brand is being represented online. Anti-phishing and fraud monitoring tools help in identifying if there is any online copyright infringement activity going on against your organization’s website or application.

Avoid Clicking on Links

Emails are the successful carriers of malicious attachments like links, document files, images, etc. Try to avoid clicking suspicious or unexpected email attachments as they redirect users to fraud web pages and request personal information. Make sure to verify such emails on an incident response tool so as to avoid becoming a target of any cyber attack.

Email Authentication Protocols

Why pay for recovering damages of cyberattacks when you can easily invest in right cybersecurity solutions and that too in comparatively less cost? Secure your email domain from unauthorized access with email authentication protocols such as DMARC, dynamic SPF, and dynamic DKIM.